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A “virtual autopsy” of a mummified 17th century Austrian infant has shed new light on Renaissance childhood — as well as the importance of vitamin D to health. The researchers used CT scans to examine the remains, which had been found in an aristocratic Austrian family crypt containing the perfect conditions for natural mummification. Analysis revealed that the child was a boy approximately 1 year old and overweight for his age, according to the German scientists However, his diet didn’t result in proper nutrition for a healthy body, creating a mystery for scientists. The child had been stricken by severe rickets or scurvy, diseases that are driven by deficiencies in vitamins D and C, the scans revealed. The child’s rickets had caused his ribs to become malformed in a pattern called a “rachitic rosary.” Bone knobs formed at the ends of his ribs, creating the appearance of a chain of large rosary beads under the thin skin over his rib cage. The scans also revealed that the boy had inflammation of the lungs characteristic of pneumonia. Since children with rickets are more vulnerable to pneumonia, the researchers speculate his nutritional deficiency might have contributed to his early death. It appears the aristocratic son was not exposed to direct sunlight, which allows the body to create its own supply of vitamin D, said lead researcher Andreas… read on > read on >

A new trend promoted on the social media platform TikTok has people taping their lips shut at bedtime — a practice that could be dangerous, an expert warns. The purpose of mouth taping is to keep from breathing through your mouth at night. “If you have obstructive sleep apnea, yes, this can be very dangerous,” sleep specialist Dr. Raj Dasgupta told CNN. “There is limited evidence on the benefits of mouth taping and I would be very careful — and even talk to your health care provider before attempting it,” added Dasgupta, an associate professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. Not everyone who has obstructive sleep apnea knows it. People with the sleep disorder stop breathing repeatedly during the night. More than 1 billion adults worldwide between the ages of 30 and 69 alone likely have the condition, according to a 2019 study. Millions are undiagnosed. The reasons given for the mouth taping trend include trying to achieve beauty sleep. “I tape my mouth shut every single day,” one woman said on TikTok. “Sleeping properly is really important to anti-aging and looking and feeling your best.” One woman said she doesn’t remember why she started taping her mouth shut at night. “Truth be told, I don’t know. I saw on TikTok and I can’t remember what the… read on > read on >

Smoking is an incredibly hard habit to break. Anne Levine of Baltimore can attest to that. But Levine, 58, is getting help from a potential new tool: psychedelics. The four-decade smoker has tried to quit a dozen times. But once she became part of a research trial testing a psychedelic drug, quitting became easier. Researchers think they may have found the answer to quitting in a compound called psilocybin, a drug also found in “magic mushrooms.” “There’s several existing treatments, both medications and other therapies, but they all have lots of room for improvement,” Matthew Johnson, a psychedelic researcher at Johns Hopkins Medicine, told NBC News. “None of the medications help a majority of the people long-term. Even six months down the road, it’s pretty small success rates.” Johnson is leading a randomized controlled trial supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. This is the first time in 50 years the federal government has given a grant to study a psychedelic drug as a treatment, NBC News reported. “The fact that the NIH is now interested in these types of studies is a great thing,” said Dr. Charles Nemeroff, chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Texas Medical School at Austin. “It’ll provide us with funding to be able to do these controlled studies,” Nemeroff told NBC. He is not involved… read on > read on >

Controlling high blood pressure in older adults may be one of the “best bets” for reducing the risk of developing dementia, Australian researchers report. “Given population aging and the substantial costs of caring for people with dementia, even a small reduction could have considerable global impact,” said researcher Ruth Peters, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney and program lead for dementia in the George Institute’s Global Brain Health Initiative. In the study of more than 28,000 people, her team found strong evidence that lowering blood pressure could cut dementia risk. Five double-blind, placebo-controlled randomized trials were analyzed that included individuals from 20 countries. The trials used different treatments to lower blood pressure. The researchers followed patients until the development of dementia. Patients were an average age of 69 and mid-range follow-up was about four years. “We found there was a significant effect of treatment in lowering the odds of dementia associated with a sustained reduction in blood pressure in this older population,” Peters said in a George Institute news release. “Our results imply a broadly linear relationship between blood pressure reduction and lower risk of dementia, regardless of which type of treatment was used.” Without significant dementia treatment breakthroughs, reducing risks may help. An estimated 50 million people live with dementia worldwide, and the numbers could triple by 2050.… read on > read on >

Cronobacter sakazakii has been in the news as the cause of infant infections and the reason for a U.S. baby formula recall and resulting shortage this year. Infections are rare and the bacteria is harmless for most people. Yet it can be dangerous or even life-threatening for infants, especially those who are younger than 2 months old, are premature, are immunocompromised or have low birth weight. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration offers some tips for staying safe from this germ, which can live on most surfaces and survive easily in dry food and drink, such as starches, herbal teas and infant formula powder. The bacteria can also live on bottles and come into homes and factories on hands or the soles of someone’s shoes. While liquid formulas go through certain sterilizing treatments during production, powders do not, according to the FDA. So, one way to avoid the bacteria is to use ready-to-feed infant liquid formula, as recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for infants who are at higher risk. Another is to prepare powdered formula with water that is at least 158 degrees Fahrenheit, then allow it to cool before feeding an infant. This option isn’t possible for certain metabolic and specialty products, which warn against heating above 100 degrees F because it could result in a loss of vitamins… read on > read on >

A tool used to restore forest ecosystems could also be key to the battle against tick-borne disease, researchers say. Forest managers and land owners use prescribed fire to combat invasive species, improve wildlife habitat and restore ecosystem health. A recent study suggests it could also reduce tick populations and transmission of diseases that have proliferated since the early 1900s when fire suppression created forest habitats that favored survival and spread of ticks. “Before the arrival of Europeans, Eastern forests were ‘fire-dependent,’ characterized by fire-tolerant species such as pine, oak and chestnut,” said lead study author Michael Gallagher, a research ecologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service in New Lisbon, N.J. “Frequent low-to-moderate intensity fires would have fostered dry conditions, thinned the understory and diminished layers of leaf litter, which in turn would have created microclimates with lower humidity and higher temperatures,” Gallagher explained. These conditions were likely to limit ticks’ population activity and interaction with hosts, he said. But fire suppression after deforestation enabled species that thrive in moister conditions to become dominate. The result is called mesophication, and it has been widely seen throughout the eastern United States. “In the absence of fire, these mesic habitats moderate forest temperatures and humidity, promote denser understory growth, and cause greater moisture retention in forest litter,” Gallagher said. “This creates microclimates within the ideal range… read on > read on >

Despite the presence of gorilla trekkers in their habitat, endangered gorillas in the region surrounding East Africa’s Virunga Volcanoes do not have human herpesvirus, researchers say. The Gorilla Doctors team was able to assess the region’s mountain gorillas in a noninvasive way, simply watching the animals as they walked through the forest. As the gorillas chomped on vegetation such as wild celery and tossed away the stalks, researchers would retrieve the discarded plant and record the name of the gorilla in this conservation area, where they know each one. The plant leavings would be drenched with enough saliva to analyze. Scientists from the University of California, Davis tested the gorilla saliva for orally shed pathogens to rule out the presence of human herpesviruses among these primates. “We were able to do this study entirely using chewed plants,” said study lead author Dr. Tierra Smiley Evans, an epidemiologist and wildlife veterinarian at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “That allowed us to collect specimens from every known, habituated mountain gorilla in Uganda and Rwanda. This shows we can monitor gorillas — and potentially other primate species — over time, noninvasively, at the individual level and help answer questions regarding their conservation,” Evans said in a university news release. It’s an important mission. While herpesvirus may cause minor symptoms in humans, it could be more dangerous… read on > read on >

A vitamin D deficiency puts you at risk for more than just weakened bones, a major new study reports. Too little vitamin D in your system can increase your overall risk of premature death, as well as your specific risk of dying from cancer, heart disease or lung disease, according to data gleaned from more than 307,000 U.K. residents. “Each of the cause-specific forms of death that we assessed echo the same theme – this being the importance of having sufficient vitamin D prior to facing any of these life-challenging situations,” said lead researcher Joshua Sutherland. He is a PhD candidate with the Australian Center for Precision Health at the University of South Australia. Vitamin D is known at the “sunshine vitamin” because your skin synthesizes the nutrient upon exposure to direct sunlight. It’s primarily known as a crucial nutrient for building and maintaining healthy bones. However, prior research has shown that vitamin D receptors are found in most major organs and human tissues, indicating that it plays a role in regulating many other functions in the body, the researchers explained in background notes. To examine the extent of vitamin D’s importance, Sutherland and his colleagues tapped into the UK Biobank, a large-scale biomedical research database containing in-depth genetic and health information from half a million participants in England, Scotland and Wales. The research team… read on > read on >

The more often you work out, the more effective your COVID-19 vaccination will be, a new study suggests. Fully vaccinated folks who clocked high weekly levels of physical activity were nearly three times less likely to land in the hospital with COVID, compared to those who got the jab but didn’t exercise often, researchers found. “The findings suggest a possible dose response, where high levels of physical activity were associated with higher vaccine effectiveness,” said the researchers led by Dr. Jon Patricios, from Wits Sport and Health (WiSH) and School of Clinical Medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg-Braamfontein, South Africa. The study was published Oct. 24 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. “Public health messaging should encourage physical activity as a simple, cost-effective way of enhancing vaccine effectiveness to mitigate the risk of severe COVID-19 illness requiring hospital admission,” the researchers added in a journal news release. For the study, researchers analyzed medical records for nearly 200,000 health care workers belonging to a medical insurance plan with benefits or promotions that required them to wear an activity tracker. Participants were placed in three different physical activity categories — high, medium or low — based on the average weekly amount they worked out during the two years prior to the start of the study. The research team then tracked the outcomes of… read on > read on >

If the pandemic has shut down your gym, you can still stay or get fit with a simple home exercise plan, researchers say.

The Canadian study was modeled on a fitness plan known as “5BX,” or Five Basic Exercises, which was originally developed in the 1950s for the Royal Canadian Air Force. The plan doesn’t depend on special equipment and can be adjusted to individual fitness levels. read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

400-Year-Old Mummy Reveals a Nobleman’s Child, Kept From the Sun

New TikTok Trend of Mouth Taping During Sleep Carries Dangers

Could Psychedelics Help You Kick the Habit?

Keeping Blood Pressure in Check Could Cut Your Odds for Dementia

What Parents Need to Know About Cronobacter Bacteria in Baby Formula

‘Prescribed’ Fires’ Hidden Bonus: Fewer Ticks

No Sign of Human Herpesvirus in African Gorillas

Vitamin D Could Help Extend Your Life: Study

Stay Fit & Your COVID Shot May Work Even Better

Gym Closed? You Don’t Need Exercise Equipment to Stay Fit, Study Shows